Influenza

I originally intended this game to be part of the 48 hour compo, but I wasted the first 20 hours on an idea that didn't work before turning to this one, so I failed to meet the deadline.

Someone on the site suggested I enter it into the Jam, so I did.

I fear the game might be too confusing for first-time players, so I wrote a detailed guide under the game.

I don't expect many to finish the game, as it does require a great amount of time and patience, given the game's random nature.

Thanks to anyone who does give it a try. Enjoy, and do let me know if you complete it.

Hints:
- Start by spending your points in the evolution screen (DNA strand in the bottom left corner), then use Z, X, C buttons to spread your disease.
- Vomiting is the best way to defeat the first two levels.

This game is amazing! It reminds me a lot of a combination of Skool Daze and the Techno Raiders game from Dilbert's Desktop Games (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Dilbert_game_01.png). In fact, I would highly suggest checking out Techno Raiders (somehow) for some ideas for progression of this game.
I guess I just love games with little people wandering around on floors ;)

The idea of spreading the 'flu using three powers is brilliant, and it's executed pretty well here. As you noted, the random nature can make the game quite tedious at times, but I still enjoyed playing 'the waiting game'.
This could perhaps be alleviated by limiting employees to certain floors, or giving them visible tasks (i.e. a phone rings and you see a thought bubble above the head of whoever is going to go and answer it, or someone is thirsty so you know they are heading towards a water cooler). This would allow you to better target your efforts.

I had a problem wherein the manager and the doctor both routinely spawned on top of the roof of the building. This made the game a hell of a lot easier, but I don't think it was intended ;)

It would also really benefit from some variety in the floor appearances (different colour walls etc), music and sounds. Even just adding sound effects for sneezing etc would make a world of difference!

@Murray That was some amazing advice, thank you. I also think I fixed the spawning on the roof now. I made a fix this morning that prevented them from spawning on the bottom floor, because sometimes you would lose the level instantly, and that's no fun. I used Math.random() * floors - 1 instead of Math.random() * (floors - 1)... Doh!

Fantastic game, love the whole side view cut-away thing with the floors, and the little guys had a lot of personality. Like others I found it difficult to progress due to waiting around, although it was a lot easier once I realised you could use the mouse to control the camera. If you don't mind me throwing some suggestions on the controls: I think I would have liked the mouse to be the primary method of dealing out attacks - perhaps some mouse aiming on the sneezing (ranged attack), click on a nearby target for coughing (meleé) and maybe click on a spot and the guy goes there to vomit (area of affect), just an idea though. Hope you keep working on it, it's really great

Great personality in the game, and the variation you've added makes for some strategy. I noticed that the employees tended to stay on the bottom two floors cycling between them a lot... once the infection had spread to the 3rd floor it was usually over quite quickly. So I mostly carpet-bombed the bottom two floors in vomit, with the occasional sneeze on a manager to get rid of them. Then it was a case of nabbing whoever went up a floor and using them to wreak havoc ;)

I would love to see this developed more - things like spreading disease via the water cooler, or more defined paths for (some) individual employees, to add to the strategy element: you could easily build this on the current by removing the breaks between 'levels', and having it as a evolving system with an eventual goal - e.g. getting to the CEO locked in a room on the top floor - over a larger building.

Really enjoyed this one, it felt like quite an interesting and novel idea. As if I was some kind of ethereal being, influencing the tiniest aspects of the world to eventually make the right person ill, I would have been altering their fate and putting into motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to my desired outcome-- whatever that may have been. Was I playing as a malicious being or putting into place the stepping stones to better fortune for these office workers? Only time could tell...

Unfortunately I didn't manage to make it all the way through, quitting on level four. Though I did like the laid back and patient approach to the game, I found the slow slow camera control frustrating, as well as the fact that the entire office building wasn't in a single view despite the pixels being as big as my face.

I quite liked the graphics, the walking animation on the legs seemed quite exaggerated and comical. Overall, nice work @Miltage

This is really great. Challenging, fun, and humorous. Nice art style too. There's more to it than there appears to be at first. The additions of the new types of characters in later levels is really good too. I only wish there was some way to encourage the guys to move to different floors. Sometimes it slows down quite a bit just waiting for the infected ones to move to a new floor.

One of the best ideas that I've seen so far. It took me a little while to work out what I was meant to do and there is a fair bit of waiting around occasionally. Other than those minor criticisms it was great, it had lots of character and good progression.

Great game. Was kind of frustrating waiting for your sick people to change floors but not too bad. I dug the music and the animations were good. I won with maximum sneeze and base vomit. Sneeze when it gets the range increase is great, nice and direct. Thanks for making this.

Wow. Great. Awesome. Love it. The only small flaw I found here is that player has no control over infected people, at all. This sometimes is bad, because waiting for the infected ones to go another floor up can take a lot of time (on the other hand, that is exactly how it should work, and player increases chances of infecting next floor by infecting all the bottom floors). Anyway, the gameplay is perfect, even with the waiting, though after some time the music is a little repetitive. But I am nitpicking - this is an excellent entry! Congrats!

Nice work! Enjoyed this and completed it to the end. Reminds me a bit of the infectionator or pandemic series.

I didn't actually find the game hard as such, I didn't feel like I was at risk of losing by running out of men at any point. Managers were easy to deal with by infecting and doctors only temporarily cured someone.

I found the last level to be pretty frustrating sitting in a save position with plenty of infected people, but having to wait for several minutes for someone to finally go to the top floor.

ya the randomness can be very frustrating, had 4 guys in the bottom floor who would just not go to any other floors, and none were coming down. otherwise it's a very awesome game with a really cool concept, great job!!

loved it! would have preferred a more unified control scheme, mouse aiming and keys seems a bit much considering the simplicity of the interactions. especially on a QWERTZ keyboard. nevertheless, the gambling randomness and the adorable gfx made my day.